Monday, December 31, 2007

Every New Year's Eve, half of all Germans plunk down in front of their televisions to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Walk into any bar in Bavaria and shout the film's refrain: "The same procedure as last year, madam?" The whole crowd will shout back in automatic, if stilted, English: "The same procedure as every year, James." Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently repeated TV program ever, it has never been aired in the United Kingdom or the United States, and most of the English-speaking world is ignorant of its existence. When Der Spiegel probed the mystery last New Year's, it found that the BBC had not only never contemplated broadcasting this veddy British nugget in the United Kingdom, the BBC's spokesperson had never even heard of it.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

I'm off to Wales today for some book talk, but I am ashamed to say that - although I have polished off the other three nominations - I haven't reread 'Crime and Punishment' even though I am the one who recommended it. I remember it reasonably well even though I first read it years ago, so a little internet revision and a flick through the paperback will have to take the strain.

While freshmen down in Manhattan at Columbia and NYU think about jobs and paychecks they'll secure after graduation, and hook-ups they make before it, cadets have a rigorous regimented existence in class and out, and they know they will assume command of 30 men and women when it's over, probably in a hot zone.The prospect throws them into hard questions of life and death, duty and sacrifice, courage and leadership, and they probe great works to figure them out.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up".The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent.

I finally finished "The Last Place on Earth" Roland Huntford's book on Scott and Amundsen and the race for the South Pole over Christmas. It's not like me to dawdle over a read for three months, but the volume became my kit bag book, as its episodic construction suited it for piecemeal reading while the NNB had a Muay Thai lesson, or I whiled away half an hour on the recline exercise bike.

Oddly enough a chance encounter with Top Gear's Polar Special on a Freeview channel earlier this week remnded me what a brutal business travel on the ice must have been all those years ago. Richard Hammond lost the ability to count from one to ten and was bursting into tears after a matter of days on the dog sled.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

An expression of dreamy euphoria crossed the face of Sir Watkyn Bassett, collector of antique silver and nemesis of the hapless Bertie Wooster.

On the stage of Moscow's Cleopatra restaurant, a bearded Honky Tonk band was playing Irving Berlin. Nearby a group of girls in their evening finery debated which of Bertie's aunts was the most detestable.

The décor may have been decidedly New Russian and the food served by the waiters khachapuri - a sort of Georgian pizza - rather than Dover Sole. But for Sir Watkyn, alias Mikhail Kuzmenko, it was as though the restaurant had been transformed into the dining hall of Blandings Castle or the Drones Club.

Outlawed by Stalin in 1929, P G Wodehouse - or Pyelem G Vudhaus as he is known - has undergone a remarkable revival since the ban on his books was lifted in 1990.

As president and founder of the Russian Wodehouse Society he has attracted over 3,000 members, some from as far away as Cheliabinsk and Omsk, thousands of miles to the east. His monthly Wodehouse dinners at the Cleopatra and elsewhere are always sold out.

In a week when I have been gifted a copy of Michael Frayn's long out of print 1963 "Best of Beachcomber", is there a hint of a revival of classic British humourists in the air? Civilisation can only benefit. For the avoidance of doubt, be advised that I unhesitatingly include Vivian Stanshall, the Ginger Geezer, in that august company.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Just like last year, and the year before I am marking Christmas on the blog with a story. This season's offering is perhaps the most famous, and a hat tip goes to my brother for getting me to read it.

STAVE ONE.

MARLEY’S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

Thursday, December 20, 2007

If you hear Céline in Jamaica, run: Her music, blasted at high volume, has become sonic wallpaper in bad neighborhoods, according to music critic Garnette Codogan: “It became a cue to me to walk ... faster if I was ever in aneighborhood I didn’t know and heard Céline Dion.”

Well I never. Then again, at least the rude boys haven't adopted the resurrected Zep's:

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

As Colour House completists we are off to see CabareX this evening. Judging by the picture on the right, this may possibly not be quite my thing as I tend towards the world view of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End ......

Like the shock of fondling a raw sausage blindfold at a gay party the significance of the van was made clear. In a florid scriptiform on the side was painted the following: Nice and Tidy, and in brackets, Both A Right Couple Of Pairs, Just Relax And Let Us Do It, and in the right hand corner a crude drawing of the masks of tragedy and comedy labelled Before and After.

The gentlemen owners of this vehicle lodged in the village at the Fool and Bladder and did contract housecleaning but they purported to be resting theatrical artistes. Both were given to striped blazers, orange pancake, obvious wigs, matching handkerchiefs, shaven legs and musical comedy which they visited on the drinking fraternity of the Fool and Bladder with unceasing enthusiasm, until that is old Seth Onetooth put a stop to it claiming "I’m going as daft as a mahogany frying pan".

Great Aunt Florrie’s premise that all musicians were "nice people" had prompted her to place the music room at Rawlinson End at their disposal. And they confessed themselves to be "terribly touched". Henry’s reaction to their presence now was primarily of apoplectic astonishment, after all you don’t expect decent folk to take you up on an invitation, its just downright rudery. "Grrreat Thing" he bellowed "those simpering nancy boys are in the house, get up you stinking blancmange, quick go lock the piano pacey pacey before the.." but it was too late. There were loud theatrical chortles from across the hall, a hint of Cologne, and

(Duet - Nigel Nice and Teddy Tidy)

This impertinent jollity in the middle of an English afternoon left Sir Henry shivering with a red passion. His eyebrows like limp bats, and his face a crumpled tissue upon which a lobster might well have wiped its bottom. "All crime" he declared "is due to incorrect breathing".

Grim faced and cold Henry snatched from the wall the sickle sharp boar tusks he used for defacing Reader Digest, and in moments crossed the hall and flung open the doors of the music room. Startled, Nigel Nice, banjulele held fol de rol, mince mince minced across the room. "Sir Henry, nice to see you, to see you…." Henry’s glare throttled his hypocrisy at birth.

"Do you know what a palmist once said to me? She said - Will You Let Go.

Gentlemen I am a bulldog and you will know my bite is worse".

Teddy Tidy held the piano stool before him. Nigel Nice in an attempt to look invalid put on his glasses and blinked. Stamping in frenzy Henry bellowed the war cry of the Zulu "Whoo Shoo Foo" and adjusting a serviette about his throat "Now you squids prepare for whacks".

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon's proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and pay only for what they use.

If we were just starting out in business I might be tempted to use Amazon for everything. I'm amazed that Microsoft doesn't seem to be responding for all the trumpeting of its Live initiatives.

Monday, December 17, 2007

I went to see the First Emperor exhibition in the British Museum yesterday. A six o'clock ticket meant that I had to find a nearby boozer to watch the Arsenal Chelsea game which kicked off at four.

When The Profit Burglar suggested The Plough in Museum Street, I remembered reading in Time Out a couple of weeks ago that this was the pub where Aleister Crowley drank regularly.

All the time we were there I kept smiling to myself at a mental image of "The Wickedest Man In the World" convening a meeting of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn over a pint of bitter and a packet of cheese 'n' onion crisps in such a quotidian setting.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Hugh gave me a copy - out of the blue - of the "Best of the Brunning Sunflower Blues Band" at Tighten Up's Christmas dinner on Friday. A gracious gesture, to repay us I think for hosting him at AbbeyFest's free music Fridays over the years, and especially the Bob Brunning organised Blues Weekend that traditionally closes the event.

Coincidentally, I was having a pint in the Tup with Simon (Bob's son) a couple of weeks ago, when he hailed another drinker with, "Did I hear you say that your father played with Chuck Berry? Mine did too."

This, I remember thinking, was a marvelously unlikely turn for events to take on a slow Monday night in Colliers Wood.

They swapped stories. My favourite was Chuck's predilection for duck walking over the the keyboard player to ask, "what song are we playing?" during extended solos. I guess twelve bar blues progressions tend to blur one into another after half a century on the road.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

There are about eight thousand Indian restaurants in Britain and the great majority of these are run by Bangladeshis. Most of these come from the Seaman's Zone at the centre of the small district Syhlet.

The Profit Burglar and I decided to celebrate this (and tick Bangladesh off our "eat our way around the world in London" project) with a visit to Brick Lane this week.

Brick Lane teems with curry houses, hustlers, and hawkers who try and entice you into their establishments with promises of discounts and free rounds of drinks. We picked out a place called Sonargoan at random and got outside a mountain of familiar fayre in the form of bhajis, curries, pulaos, naans and relishes.

Cheer thrice for the good people of Syhlet, and follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.

Friday, December 14, 2007

The Bill is a long-running British television police procedural, first broadcast on 16 October 1984 and transmitted on ITV, at 8pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I half watched it last night - with a glass of wine in hand - with the parents of a boy who does Thai boxing with my little fella, and as our kids were getting outside some pizza.

I didn't pay any attention at all to the story that was unfolding, but I was amazed to find that I was utterly and unironically thrilled whenever I recognised a location; which was often as the studio is only around the corner.

I spent a very exciting five minutes trying to work out if a pawn brokers in the episode was a redressed Charlie's Rock Shop, and practically swooned when I recognised Venus.

It is all very worrying. I could easily become an Olympic level bore if I watch it again.

“A man's gotta know his limitations.”

P.S. The Bill's director had obviously studied his 'West Wing'. There was an awful lot of "walk and talk" in the station.

A great and glorious thing it isTo learn, for seven years or so,The Lord knows what of that and this,Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--The flying bullet down the Pass,That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spentOn making brain and body meeterFor all the murderous intentComprised in "villainous saltpetre!"And after--ask the YusufzaiesWhat comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--A canter down some dark defile--Two thousand pounds of educationDrops to a ten-rupee jezail--The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,No formulae the text-books know,Will turn the bullet from your coat,Or ward the tulwar's downward blowStrike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the campWill pay for all the school expensesOf any Kurrum Valley scampWho knows no word of moods and tenses,But, being blessed with perfect sight,Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,The troop-ships bring us one by one,At vast expense of time and steam,To slay Afridis where they run.

Monday, December 10, 2007

I don't generally hold with the notion that kids are naturally more at home with IT than anyone old enough to shave, but I am still surprised - in my wired house and my wired office - at my seven year old's familiarity with the online world.

He amazed me with his skill at navigating Google Earth on Friday, "we don't do it on the whitebaord we just do it in the IT suite". And yesterday he found and whiled away a quarter of an hour playing Presidential Paintball. At least he hasn't got a clue who Hillary and Rudi are; that is valuable innocence.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

... the remarkably harmonious blog that Junko Kenetsuna has been writing five times a week for the past three years about her midday meal.With understated precision, she calls her blog "I had my lunch."

The story of John Darwin, the "missing assumed dead" canoeist's miraculous reappearance after five years has been all over the press for the last few days. Eyebrows were raised when a photo of him with his wife apparently taken in Panama last year emerged.

The woman who uncovered the picture of missing John Darwin with his wife found it with a simple search on Google.She typed in the words John, Anne and Panama, clicked on images and up it popped - complete with date.The single mum, who does not want to be named, said: "I'd like to nominate them for 'World's Dumbest' awards."Not only were they photographed but the date was actually on the picture. It was just too good to be true."The photo of John and Anne was taken in July 2006 for a "Move to Panama" website. It has now been removed.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.

"The issue of sex in space is a serious one," he says. "The experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without gravity."

He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Only four positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance". The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: "One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible."

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies or questions the Holocaust, Iranians have been glued to their TV sets watching the concluding episodes of a 22-part, government-financed docu-drama in which an Iranian saves his Jewish sweetheart from the Nazi death camps. Not only is the Holocaust not denied or questioned, its Jewish victims are treated with unambiguous sympathy.

In Zero Degree Turn, a half-Iranian, half-Palestinian named Habib Parsa falls in love with a French Jewish girl while studying in Paris. Later, as an official at the Iranian embassy, he arranges to issue Iranian passports to the girl and her mother and send them to safety in Tehran.

Director Hassan Fathi says the story is based on Abdol Hussein Sardari, a real-life charge d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Paris, who saved some 1,000 European Jews by forging Iranian passports so they could exit the country in an exodus of Iranian Jews back to Iran ...........

Monday, December 03, 2007

I got in the habit earlier this year, of popping into the office where they were editing the Any Winehouse documentary to see how it was getting along. It was a fascinating process - especially towards the end when, though the structure was essentially set, I was amazed to see what a difference all the fine tuning made to how smoothly it ran together.